Has evolution stopped?

[hmkpoker]

So natural selection, through the trials and errors that occurred with different mutations, has brought [censored] sapiens, unquestionably the most intelligent and powerful species known in natural history, into existence.

Humans are smart enough to deal with different environmental changes through social programs, science and technology. If a new virus comes out that threatens human life, a cure will probably be developed before natural selection makes us immune to the disease. Were the temperature to suddenly drop, humans will build better insulation, and not eventually grow into a race of fat hairy people that deal with cold better.

So, is evolution over? It seems to me that intelligence has taken over where natural selection left off.

[RJT]

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So, is evolution over? It seems to me that intelligence has taken over where natural selection left off.

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Surely, you are not using this forum as your evidence for this impression. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[hmkpoker]

Please...I'd like to try and have a nice thread going that isn't wrought with insults, sarcasm and religion-bashing.

[Rduke55]

This seems to be becoming a more and more common misconception. No, evolution hasn't stopped and it never will. even if you could cure every disease, etc. you'd still have sexual selection.
And diseases are still a great example of natural selection and humans.
People seem to think that just because there hasn't been a different species of hominid in the last 50K years or so that it's stopped. Evolution can be reeaaallly slow.
And think about what all the migrating populations of the past 100 years means for gene pools that have been relatively closed off for thousands of years.

[purnell]

As long as some people reproduce and others don't, some kind of natural selection is taking place.

[Trantor]

[ QUOTE ]
So natural selection, through the trials and errors that occurred with different mutations, has brought [censored] sapiens, unquestionably the most intelligent and powerful species known in natural history, into existence.

Humans are smart enough to deal with different environmental changes through social programs, science and technology. If a new virus comes out that threatens human life, a cure will probably be developed before natural selection makes us immune to the disease. Were the temperature to suddenly drop, humans will build better insulation, and not eventually grow into a race of fat hairy people that deal with cold better.

So, is evolution over? It seems to me that intelligence has taken over where natural selection left off.

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In my view no. One example of current evolutionary pressure....could you "think" your may out of dying of AIDS?

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/r...5/30_aids.html

[Borodog]

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So, is evolution over? It seems to me that intelligence has taken over where natural selection left off.

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This is an interesting topic. Evolution is not over currently, as the vast majority of the human population is still subject to the whims of nature.

But I personally believe we're not far off from a time when all diseases, and probably death itself, will be cured (for lack of a better word), except possibly in the case of extremely violent, uh, disassembly shall we say (and possibly even then).

One of the prerequisites for speciation is geographical separation, which allows formerly interbreeding populations to experience different genetic drift and selection, without cross transport of genetic information to the now separate groups. As the world becomes more and more interconnected, this geographical separation will cease to exist on the Earth itself. But it will probably reappear as the species moves off-planet and begins colonizing the solar system.

Evolution is not driven just by who dies. It is driven by differential reproductive success. Just because everyone will eventually survive to breeding age does not guarantee that everyone will breed, or how many offspring they will contribute to the gene pool. Also, if death is "cured" as I predict it will be, and population growth is eventually drastically curtailed (which will happen regardless of whether death is cured), the gene pool will stop changing (or at least start changing much more slowly).

Finally, just because the gene pool stops changing very much from differential reproductive success and the end of natural selection, does not preclude unnatural selection. I believe that the human genome may well be manipulated much like we manipulate hair styles today. Think of the body modifications that exist today, from tattoos to scarification to branding to piercings to horns to fangs. Do you think that people will have any qualms about manipulating their DNA?

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It seems to me that intelligence has taken over where natural selection left off.

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Interestingly, high IQ is inversely coordinated in the US with family size. Thus, the most intelligent (and economically successful) members of society are in fact the least likely to reproduce. Intelligence almost acts as a Darwinistic selection pressure against reproduction.

[hmkpoker]

It may just be that given the rapidity of progress in society, technology and medicine, evolution occurs at a rate too slowly by comparison to be observable, or even to matter anymore.

Stephen Hawking wrote (more or less) that he thought we've outgrown our natural evolution, such that we are evolving more by technological means. He hints at genetic engineering, too. Which, I'm all for, by the way. It's ironic that the religious folks that don't believe in Evolution, will be the ones to limit our evolution. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] (no religion-bashing intended)